E. J. Dionne Quotes & Sayings

The worst kind of job to have is a job with lots of responsibility and very little power. — E. J. Dionne

God forbid that Americans earning, say, more than $1 million a year be asked to pony up a little more in taxes to support a larger military at a time when, we are told over and over, the country is in the middle of a war on terror. Millionaires can't be asked to sacrifice even just a little bit. No, they deserve to have their taxes cut while others fight and die. — E. J. Dionne

The new culture war is about national identity rather than religion and 'transcendent authority.' It focuses on which groups the United States will formally admit to residence and citizenship. It asks the same question as the old culture war: 'Who are we?' But the earlier query was primarily about how we define ourselves morally. The new question is about how we define ourselves ethnically, racially and linguistically. It is, in truth, one of the oldest questions in our history, going back to our earliest immigration battles of the 1840s and 1850s. — E. J. Dionne

Here you had John McCain and Lindsey Graham in a very principled way standing up and defending Barack Obama. You had people like Gene Robinson and a lot of other liberals, who said, and this I personally agree with, however flawed Rand Paul was as a messenger, we need a debate about this. The administration has not been forthcoming enough about its drone policy. — E. J. Dionne

Forgive me for noting that conservatives seem to believe that the rich will work harder if we give them more, and the poor will work harder if we give them less. — E. J. Dionne

The money matters. And secret money is corrupting, secret money is dangerous, secret money leads to scandal. — E. J. Dionne

Nowhere else in the world do the laws on firearms become the playthings of politicians and lobbyists intent on manufacturing cultural conflict. Nowhere else do elected officials turn the matter of taking a gun to church into a searing ideological question. But then, guns are not a religion in most countries. — E. J. Dionne

We have pursued public policies that kind of hold the recovery back, but the private economy is really starting to roll. — E. J. Dionne

When [Republicans] say they can reduce taxes and trim deficits at the same time, they are either deluded or deceptive, and they are playing voters for fools. — E. J. Dionne

I actually think there are more Republicans than people realize who would be sympathetic to immigration reform in the rank and file. I think the lesson for Jeb Bush is politicians shouldn't write books with long lead times. — E. J. Dionne

The publication of Friedrich A. von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom in 1944 is rightly seen as the first shot in the intellectual battle that was to turn the tide in favor of conservatism i.e. non-statist liberalism . — E. J. Dionne

Hope is different from optimism. Hope is a tough virtue, not a psychological predisposition. Hope insists on taking facts and reason into account and still insisting that improvement ... is always a real possibility. — E. J. Dionne

Liberals and conservatives disagree over what are the most important sins. For conservatives, the sins that matter are personal irresponsibility, the flight from family life, sexual permissiveness, the failure of individuals to work hard. For liberals, the gravest sins are intolerance, a lack of generosity toward the needy, narrow-mindedness toward social and racial minorities. — E. J. Dionne

What is working in the economy is a natural comeback plus some effects of the policies we've been following. But I'm sort of worried about the long term effects. — E. J. Dionne

A nation that hates politics will not long survive as a democracy. — E. J. Dionne